It doesn’t matter how much evidence you gather; we can’t say that a dead person who never came out was trans. It sucks and it’s a tragedy how things panned out, but if there’s one thing he didn’t like in life, it was people trying to analyze his psychology. No matter how well intentioned, it’s just us applying our own worldview to things we can never get definitive answers to.
That’s actually really gross and an erasure of trans people from history. There are a lot of cases now and throughout history of trans people unable to come out but have personal records or accounts from those close to them detailing how they felt about themselves. Saying we shouldn’t suggest anyone who was never out was trans isn’t just taking an unbiased stance, trans people are deliberately and systemically pressured from not coming out and there’s cases of trans people who were out who have their identities erased postmortem. So contributing to that feels at best like giving up ground to people who want us dead and erased.
It’s a different story if we do that firsthand accounts that more definitively indicate how that self identified, but from what I know about Kurt Cobain, he was just very eggy and queer coded. It’s entirely possible Kurt was trans, but the reason we can’t know for sure is because he never found out, not because his identity was erased.
Something that should be made very clear when talking about dead people who never found out, is that you can’t “find out” for them. Self-discovery is something that can only happen from the self. It can’t happen when someone dies.
So if they didn’t before they died and they never told anyone, you can’t assume they did because you can’t actually know, and it’s equally likely you are misgendering them.
I refuse to call a person pronouns they haven’t publicly identified with. I apply this practice to everybody whether they’re celebrities or people I know irl; whether they’re alive or dead. Not doing so is simply misgendering, which is disrespectful and harmful even if you are proven correct. It doesn’t matter if I buy into a theory about someone’s identity or not, I can’t decide another person’s gender.
We can’t definitively say Cobain was cis, and it’s really fucking sad that the person themselves can never fully answer that question. We only have the information that currently exists, and it’s not enough to say for sure. For all we know, Kurt would’ve rejected binary pronouns entirely; it’s just not our place to say.
I guess we will never know. For me reading between the lines of that summary, Ted didn’t talk about it at all, so I would have no reason to assume the psychiatrist thought about conversion therapy.
It sounds like he (she?) was angry at himself and the whole situation, and everyone involved including all of society…
It doesn’t matter how much evidence you gather; we can’t say that a dead person who never came out was trans. It sucks and it’s a tragedy how things panned out, but if there’s one thing he didn’t like in life, it was people trying to analyze his psychology. No matter how well intentioned, it’s just us applying our own worldview to things we can never get definitive answers to.
That’s actually really gross and an erasure of trans people from history. There are a lot of cases now and throughout history of trans people unable to come out but have personal records or accounts from those close to them detailing how they felt about themselves. Saying we shouldn’t suggest anyone who was never out was trans isn’t just taking an unbiased stance, trans people are deliberately and systemically pressured from not coming out and there’s cases of trans people who were out who have their identities erased postmortem. So contributing to that feels at best like giving up ground to people who want us dead and erased.
It’s a different story if we do that firsthand accounts that more definitively indicate how that self identified, but from what I know about Kurt Cobain, he was just very eggy and queer coded. It’s entirely possible Kurt was trans, but the reason we can’t know for sure is because he never found out, not because his identity was erased.
Something that should be made very clear when talking about dead people who never found out, is that you can’t “find out” for them. Self-discovery is something that can only happen from the self. It can’t happen when someone dies. So if they didn’t before they died and they never told anyone, you can’t assume they did because you can’t actually know, and it’s equally likely you are misgendering them.
CC: @SectoidLexi@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Exactly!
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I refuse to call a person pronouns they haven’t publicly identified with. I apply this practice to everybody whether they’re celebrities or people I know irl; whether they’re alive or dead. Not doing so is simply misgendering, which is disrespectful and harmful even if you are proven correct. It doesn’t matter if I buy into a theory about someone’s identity or not, I can’t decide another person’s gender.
We can’t definitively say Cobain was cis, and it’s really fucking sad that the person themselves can never fully answer that question. We only have the information that currently exists, and it’s not enough to say for sure. For all we know, Kurt would’ve rejected binary pronouns entirely; it’s just not our place to say.
I must be missing something – what was the abuse?
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I guess we will never know. For me reading between the lines of that summary, Ted didn’t talk about it at all, so I would have no reason to assume the psychiatrist thought about conversion therapy.
It sounds like he (she?) was angry at himself and the whole situation, and everyone involved including all of society…